Capitals beat Canucks 2-1 in overtime

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Capitals beat Canucks 2-1 in overtime

2025-01-09 14:30 Last Updated At：14:42

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pierre-Luc Dubois scored his second goal of the game late in overtime, Logan Thompson made 30 saves and the Washington Capitals beat the Vancouver Canucks 2-1 on Wednesday night despite another sluggish performance.

Dubois ended it with 40.3 seconds left in the 3-on-3 OT, long after scoring on Lankinen with 32.7 seconds remaining in the first period. Thompson stopped 20 of the 21 shots he faced in the second period alone, and Washington was lucky to avoid another loss while managing just 18 on net.

Lankinen made 16 saves and Conor Garland scored the only goal for the Canucks, who have lost three in a row and eight of their past 10 games.

Alex Ovechkin was held without a goal for back-to-back games and remains at 872. He is 23 away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career record.

BLACKHAWKS 3, AVALANCHE 1

CHICAGO (AP) — Connor Bedard had a goal and an assist, and Chicago beat Colorado.

Frank Nazar and Ilya Mikheyev also scored for Chicago, which had lost six of seven. Petr Mrazek stopped 35 shots.

Bedard made it 3-1 when he beat Trent Miner for his 11th goal 11:54 into the third period. The 19-year-old center has four goals and seven assists during an eight-game point streak, a career-best run in his second season.

Juuso Parssinen scored for Colorado in the opener of a three-game trip. Miner stopped 17 shots in his first career start.

The Avs played without forward Jonathan Drouin, who was sidelined by an upper-body injury. They dropped to 12-4-1 in their last 17 games.

PANTHERS 4, UTAH 1

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Jesper Boqvist scored twice in the third period and Florida beat Utah.

Sam Reinhart and Eetu Luostarinen each had a goal for the reigning Stanley Cup champions. Matthew Tkachuk finished with two assists, and Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves.

Boqvist scored at 1:48 of the third to make it 2-0, then again at 17:59 from his own end into an empty net to make it 3-1. Luostarinen added another empty-netter with 22 seconds remaining.

Reinhart opened the scoring at 1:05 of the second. It was his 67th power-play goal for the Panthers, passing Scott Mellanby for second place in franchise history.

Utah got on the board at 13:41 of the third with Logan Cooley’s power-play goal, assisted by Clayton Keller and Mikhail Sergachev.

Karel Vejmelka stopped 29 shots for Utah.

Uvalde schools officer did nothing until it was too late during shooting, prosecutor says

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — In the crucial, chaotic minutes after a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, began firing inside an elementary school, a police officer now accused of failing to protect the children stood by without making a move to stop the carnage, a prosecutor told a jury Tuesday.

School officer Adrian Gonzales arrived at the scene of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history while the teenage assailant was still outside the building. But he did not try to distract or engage him, even when a teacher pointed out the direction of the shooter, special prosecutor Bill Turner said during opening statements of a criminal trial.

The officer only went inside Robb Elementary “after the damage had been done,” Turner said.

Defense attorneys disputed the accusations that Gonzales — one of two officers charged in the aftermath of the 2022 attack — did nothing, saying he radioed for more help and evacuated children as other police arrived.

“The government makes it want to seem like he just sat there,” said defense attorney Nico LaHood. “He did what he could, with what he knew at the time.”

Prosecutors focused sharply on Gonzales’ steps in the minutes after the shooting began and as the first officers arrived. They did not address the hundreds of other local, state and federal officers who arrived and waited more than an hour to confront the gunman, who was eventually killed by a tactical team of officers.

Gonzales, who is no longer a Uvalde schools officer, has pleaded not guilty to 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment and could be sentenced to a maximum of two years in prison if convicted.

It’s rare for an officer to be criminally charged with not doing more to save lives.

“He could have stopped him, but he didn’t want to be the target,” said Velma Lisa Duran, sister of teacher Irma Garcia, who was among the 19 students and two teachers who were killed.

Duran, who showed up early at the courthouse to watch the beginning of the trial, said authorities stood by while her sister “died protecting children.”

Defense attorneys described an officer who tried to assess where the gunman was while thinking he was being fired on without protection against a high-powered rifle.

Gonzales was among the first group to go into the building before they took fire from Salvador Ramos, the officer’s attorneys said.

“This isn’t a man waiting around. This isn’t a man failing to act,” defense attorney Jason Goss said.

Gonzales and former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo are the only two officers to face criminal charges over the response. Arredondo’s trial has not been scheduled.

Gonzales, a 10-year veteran of the police force, had extensive active shooter training, the special prosecutor said.

“When a child calls 911, we have a right to expect a response,” Turner said, his voice trembling with emotion.

Stephanie Hale, who was teaching at Robb Elementary the day of the attack, struggled through tears to describe running with students from the playground to the school building and hiding in a classroom.

Hale said once inside, she and other teachers grabbed scissors to defend themselves if the gunman came in the room. Hale described students hiding in the dark as she crawled on her belly to reach the ones who were struggling to stay calm.

“We got together and came up with a plan: To do what we had to do to defend” the children, Hale said.

She discovered later some of the children had grabbed safety scissors to mimic the teachers.

The trial, which is expected to last about two weeks, is sure to be traumatic for the victims’ families. Some are expected to testify, along with law enforcement agents, emergency dispatchers and school employees.

As testimony began, tissue boxes were brought to the families. Some shook their heads as they listened to audio from the first 911 calls, but as they heard the voices become more frantic, the cries in the courtroom were inescapable.

The trial was moved to Corpus Christi after Gonzales’ attorneys argued he could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde.

Some families of the victims have voiced anger that more officers were not charged given that nearly 400 federal, state and local officers converged on the school soon after the attack.

Terrified students inside the classrooms called 911 and parents outside begged for intervention by officers, some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway.

An investigation found 77 minutes passed from the time authorities arrived until they breached the classroom and killed Ramos, who was obsessed with violence and notoriety in the months leading up to the shooting.

State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officers waited so long.

The officer’s attorneys told jurors that there was plenty of blame to go around — from the lack of security at the school to police policy — and that prosecutors will try to play on their emotions by showing photos from the scene.

“What the prosecution wants you to do is get mad at Adrian. They are going to try to play on your emotions,” Goss said.

“The monster who hurt these children is dead,” he said. “He did not get this justice.”

Prosecutors likely will face a high bar to win a conviction. Juries are often reluctant to convict law enforcement officers for inaction, as seen after the Parkland, Florida, school massacre in 2018. A sheriff’s deputy was acquitted by a jury after being charged with failing to confront the shooter in that attack — the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting.

Vertuno reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press journalists Nicholas Ingram in Corpus Christi, Texas; Juan A. Lozano in Houston; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.